Views, hints, tips and info from an IT guy

Menu

other

I seem to be writing a lot of announcement blog posts just recently, this should be the last for now and I have some technical posts in draft. However, for now I have some exciting news to share. Last week I finished just over 4 years at what is now my previous employer – Inframon,…

You may have seen the good news I shared recently about being awarded a Microsoft MVP award. Needless to say I’m over the moon with this. I know this is an aspiration for a lot of people so I decided I would write a post to let them know exactly what changes after receiving that…

After some conversations with fellow IT admins recently it became apparent that you can obtain an annual subscription to Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EM+S) through an existing MSDN subscription. If you have no access to MSDN then I’m afraid this isn’t going to help but if you have, like many, MSDN subscriptions either through…

Last week was one of those enjoyable yet busy weeks as I made my debut speaking appearance at Experts Live Europe in Berlin. Here I presented three sessions during the 3 day conference: Troubleshooting Configuration Manager:Current Branch Special Journey to the new approach to hybrid patching with SCCM and OMS (joint session with Sam Erskine)…

They say the only constant in IT is change. It’s fair to say it’s been a little while since I last did any significant writing or presenting and a lot has changed in my world since then but here I am alive and kicking and getting back into the swing of the IT community again.…

As an IT consultant I travel all over the UK wherever the work takes me. This means working when, how and where you can. Trains, planes and automobiles is the old adage and I can honestly say I’ve worked in or on each as well as the obligatory hotels, pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, car showrooms…

A quick post here for one I’ve come across a few times. When trying to enable to .Net Framework 3.5 in Windows Server 2012 you get the message that you are missing source files as below: Essentially you need to provide Windows with the installation media to be able to install .Net Framework 3.5. That…

So I thought it about time I started to get to grips with Orchestrator 2012. It’s a product I’ve been aware of and known a bit about since Opalis (pre-Microsoft) days and as someone who frequently uses other Microsoft System Center and server products I know it’s capabilities and how useful it can be to…

Isn’t it funny how things in life seem to go round in circles over sometimes? Whilst reading and talking to people recently about Microsoft Windows Server 2012 the one thing that is always mentioned is “you need to know powershell”. It seems that Microsoft are now really making a big push now to get people…

As in one of my previous blog posts I re-visited the CIS website today and was very pleased to find that they had published hardening guides for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. These really are great guides which in my mind should be in every IT department and at least reviewed as a baseline policy for your…